Veil of Secrecy Partially Lifted as US Discloses Names of Guantanamo Prisoners Cleared for Transfer

The United States government has disclosed the names of fifty-five of the eighty-six prisoners cleared for transfer from Guantanamo Bay prison. All of the names made public were of prisoners President Barack Obama’s interagency Guantanamo Bay Review Task Force approved for release from the prison. Previously, the US government had maintained the names of prisoners cleared could not be made public because it would get in the way of diplomatic efforts to repatriate or resettle prisoners in their home country or other countries.

In a US District Court of the District of Columbia court filing, the Justice Department declared:

In the over two years since the Task Force completed its status reviews, circumstances have changed such that the decisions by the Task Force approving detainees for transfer no longer warrant protection. The efforts of the United States to resettle Guantanamo detainees have largely been successful – they have resulted in 40 detainees being resettled in third countries because of treatment or other concerns in their countries of origin since 2009. In addition, 28 detainees have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 2009. Consequently, the diplomatic and national security harms identified in the Fried Declaration are no longer as acute. In Respondents’ view, there is no longer a need to withhold from the public the status of detainees who have been approved for transfer. [emphasis added]

Most of these people who are listed have been held in indefinite detention for around eleven years.

The additional transparency is certainly welcome. Zachary Katznelson, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, told Firedoglake that lawyers were not approved to talk publicly about these men because their names could not be disclosed. This prevented them from sharing their knowledge, which was beyond the knowledge of any diplomat who would speak on behalf of these men. It “hindered efforts to close Guantanamo.” Now, hopefully, the lawyers would be permitted to speak openly to help foreign governments make reasoned choices about whether to allow prisoners to resettle in their country.

On the other hand, there are at least eighty-six prisoners being held in Guantanamo right now who would dispute the claim that the United States’ efforts to resettle Guantanamo detainees have “largely been successful.” Their lawyers, along with civil liberties or human rights organizations, would likely dispute this suggestion as well. They are still imprisoned and have not been set free.

Katznelson explained, while there are men from Syria and Uighurs from China who may not be able to safely return, “There are men from Tunisia on this list who have been obviously cleared for a long time and initially when a clearance decision was made, they couldn’t safely go home.”

“But now there’s a new government there,” said Katznelson. “There’s a new democratic regime there and the US should be trusting this new democracy and validating it by returning these men home, where they can now safely rejoin their families.”

Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights stated the release, “Finally dispels the myth that the remaining detainees who are trapped at Guantánamo are too dangerous to be released.” But he added, “Most of the 55 men listed have endured 11 years of indefinite detention without charge or trial, despite the unanimous assessment of every responsible US national security agency that these men could be safely released or transferred. The government’s justification for hiding the identities of these men was always unconvincing, and their names should have been made public three years ago when the Guantanamo Review Task Force made its determinations.”

The secrecy contributed to the failure of President Barack Obama to resettle detainees and close Guantanamo. In a US diplomatic cable sent out in February 2009 and released by WikiLeaks, a representative from Spain’s government:

…highlighted the gap between public perceptions of the kinds of detaines at Guantanamo and the reality that many are very low risk. She felt that this was a message the US had to carry, and urged the administration to “plainly” explain to Americans (and thus Europeans) that while some detainees are very dangerous, many of them do not pose a serious threat. [The representative] also commented that whenever a European newspaper ran a story on Guantanamo, they ran the typical picture of a hunched-over detainee in an orange jumpsuit. [The representative] said that “we need better pictures” and urged us to turn the story around by showing low-risk detainees in a better light…

Making discussions with foreign governments public and sharing full details on the behind-the-scenes struggle to resettle Uighurs that was occurring as a result of China could have helped make closing Guantanamo possible, but that did not happen because the Obama administration was afraid of Republicans. Eventually, all efforts to close Guantanamo collapsed because people like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel did not want to expend political capital explaining to Americans why it was critical to close the prison and let prisoners go free.

There are people on this list, such as British prisoner Shaker Aamer, who have been cleared for release twice. He has participated in hunger strikes. He has been tortured. He has been held in isolation. Most recently, according to the human rights organization Reprieve, Aamer was placed in isolation—solitary confinement—on July 15, 2011. He was put in a cell that has no view outside, “just a one meter by 30 centimeters of opaque glass, and no real toilet, just a hole in the ground.”

Reprieve reported in February of this year that it was “not for doing anything wrong” but for “merely asserting the human rights of his fellow prisoners.” He also told Reprieve, “There is meant to be a 30 day maximum on isolation as a punishment…So it’s not called isolation any more it’s called ‘separation.’” ?He was reading and re-reading 1984 by George Orwell and said, “You must read this book because you need to understand what is happening here in Guantánamo. Torture is for torture, the system is for the system,” and part of that reaction to the book came from the fact that he believes torture in Guantanamo is worse today than before. “Here they destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks.”

Another detainee, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, was cleared for release and might have appeared on this list if he had not died at Guantanamo. Latif was thirty-two years-old. He lived a third of his life in indefinite detention. He, like many of the other prisoners, had been held in indefinite detention for nearly a decade or more. He, like most of the others, was held without charge or trial in a hellish limbo

Simply put, if resettlement efforts were or had been successful, Guantanamo Bay prison would be closed by now. The US could have, at any point, begun the process of letting prisoners who pose absolutely no risk whatsoever resettle here in the US. But to do that would have forced the government and the American people to truly reflect and atone for the gross human rights abuses committed over the past years. That is why other countries of the world are being urged to take prisoners for us, and why some countries are incredulous when asked to take responsibility for people who have been victims of injustice perpetrated by the US government.

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All Names, ISNs & CVs of the Prisoners Whose Names Were Released [PDF]